Medicinal Facts
by sxcond
Summary: Written for QLFC Round 10.


(word) sinking

(song) 'Hello' by Evanescence

Lyrics used:

Has no one told you she's not breathing?

Hello

If I smile and don't believe

Soon I know I'll wake from this dream

Don't cry

(quote) 'Real, or not real?' - Peeta Mellark, Mockingjay

Falmouth Falcons

CHASER 1: Dilys Derwent (Portrait)

* * *

Fact

01.

Called a Lockhart, feathers from this rare peacock species that resides in St Mungo's can be obtained and used in the Pimple Cream Potion.

Trapped in her portrait, Dilys Derwent has been watching Lockhart for a while. It could be a decade, or mere months. She's never been good with time even when she'd been alive, and she blames her years working as a healer for that. (What is time when you're flying across the hospital room, desperately trying to save someone from the maws of death?)

Throughout the period she's watched him, Dilys has learnt one indisputable fact: Lockhart is an utter peacock.

To be honest, she's not even certain that the feather of his favourite peacock quill hadn't been sourced from himself.

* * *

Fact

02.

Miriam Strout is a salve on the heart.

Miriam Strout is a dear. She's brilliant at caretaking, Dilys thinks. It's crystal clear in the way she moves and the soft, gentle way she talks that Miriam was born to care for the unfortunate patients in the Janus Thickey Ward.

Unfortunate they were, indeed.

There was the Unspeakable, Broderick Bode, who had lost his identity in some tragic accident and now thought himself a teapot. Similar to Broderick, Agnes and Herbert Chorley both suffered delusions where they thought themselves animals. A dog, for Agnes, and a duck, for Herbert.

As for Lockhart, he had lost his identity.

Lastly, there was Alice and Frank Longbottom, the couple who had been cursed into insanity and condemned to ceaselessly wander in their minds.

Their poor son, Dilys thinks. Poor Neville.

And then, as she watches Lockhart moon after Miriam Strout, the thought comes unbidden: poor Lockhart.

* * *

Fact

03.

Janus Thickey is for the lost ones. No medicine can save them.

Janus Thickey is the ward for the tragic ones, Dilys thinks sympathetically. The ones forever lost to the world.

(A part of her envies them, though. How simple life must be, to be a dog or a duck, or just lost in your head.)

* * *

Fact

04.

Dilys Derwent died in her sleep, and nothing can remedy the regrets that plague her.

Some people would like to pass away in their sleep: peacefully. Dilys hates that she had. She wishes that she'd know. She wishes that she could have died in another way, a meaningful way. Perhaps by protecting a student with her body, or by defeating a Dark Lord.

Ever since she was young, Dilys has had the perfect pureblood family. It'd been such a shock when she met her future lover at Hogwarts and discovered that others could have nothing.

He'd been wearing second-hand robes, a hand-me-down hat, and she'd asked, insensitively, why his robe had been so tattered.

Later, she'd feel so illimitably ashamed of her fortune and ignorance that she decided to dedicate her whole being to helping those who needed it.

Now, it was strange—and she thought it a little selfish and wasteful—to have died without making full use of her last, dying breath to help someone.

Even now, more than two centuries later, she regrets it. Maybe that's why she adored Miriam Strout so much after Miriam died. She had done what Dilys could not.

* * *

Fact

05.

Ironically, immortality is the worst healing remedy one can ever apply.

Dilys thinks that immortality is the most agonising part of being a portrait.

It's cruel to lock someone in a portrait. To be treated as less than human and expected to agree with them that you're not human, just because the original is dead is awful. Worse, she has to endure this until all her portraits are destroyed.

For two centuries, she's watched people die in St Mungo's. People she could have helped if only she'd been alive. It's partly her fault they're dead now, Dilys knows. There's so much blood on her hands.

Dilys sighs in her portrait above the door to the Janus Thickey Ward.

Immortality. Dilys wonders how old the Janus Thickey patients imagine they are. Miriam certainly treats them like children.

Outside the window, a raven caws.

A sinking sensation develops in her chest.

* * *

Fact

06.

No miracle medicine can save Broderick.

Broderick dies in the dead of the night. He is discovered in the morning by Miriam, wrapped in a green Devil's Snare, strangled, purple, blue, and white. Miriam goes weak at the knees and gives an incoherent cry, waking Dilys.

"What's the matter, deary?" Dilys politely covers her soft yawn with a hand.

"Broderick! He—He's dead!" Miriam wails and Dilys thinks, that's a little over dramatic, he's probably being all inert to pretend at being a teapot again.

Then she sees Broderick, pales, and vanishes from her frame like a ghost.

"EMERGENCY IN THE JANUS THICKEY WARD! EMERGENCY IN THE JANUS THICKEY WARD!" she shouts all over the hospital.

But if there's one thing she's learnt from her many years as a Healer, it's how to spot the marks of death. There's no saving him, and Dilys can't help but imagine that he'd still be alive if only she'd been more vigilant, if only she'd recognised the plant, if only she'd woken up just once….

If only.

* * *

Fact

07.

Delirium is difficult to cure.

The numb astonishment fades, and a new shock sets in.

Her head spins. She doesn't know what to think anymore. Broderick is dead, and her blood feels like poison eating away her life in her veins because she could have saved him.

Dilys' head is stuffed with crow-feathers: dark things that befuddle her, that cast a caliginous black on her heart. Broderick's dead, and she's a little lost too.

Through the haze, she only vaguely recognises that Miriam has been suspended for slacking in checking gifts. Disappointing, Dilys thinks. She hadn't expected Miriam to be irresponsible.

* * *

Fact

08.

The Death Eaters are a plague.

The Death Eaters invade the hospital years later. Dilys spies them from her portrait. They're heading to the Janus Thickey Ward. She can't do much from her portrait, but she will hate herself if she lets someone die one more time. (Oddly enough, she's grown rather attached to the peculiar residents of Janus Thickey.)

* * *

Fact

09.

Miriam Strout is the best balm to apply in potentially fatal situations.

As it is, she cannot do anything but travel to her portrait in Miriam's home and call her to help. Dilys doesn't believe she will. Miriam's recent work ethics has disappointed her greatly. Come to think of it, the way she treats her patients—as if they were children—could be supersaturated condescension instead of gentleness.

But Dilys has to try. So she calls for Miriam to provide aid, and in seconds, Miriam has disapparated. Unable to believe her own eyes, Dilys flies back to St Mungo's.

She finds Miriam battling three Death Eaters. Lockhart is hiding behind a bed, but when he sees Miriam fighting, his face twists in pain. Slowly, he stands. His legs are quivering visibly. Still, he tackles a Death Eater and wrenches away his wand. Lockhart joins in the fight, shooting off Obliviates with quicksilver jabs and twirls of his wand.

The battle is nearly over in minutes. There's only one Death Eater left. Suddenly, a flash of green light darts past her guard and Miriam Strout falls.

Lockhart Obliviates the Death Eater, and the battle's over.

* * *

Fact

10.

Pyrrhic victories are bitter cures indeed.

Lockhart's face as he cradles Miriam's head in his arms is shrivelled, contorted, and his expression is bitter.

It's a pyrrhic victory.

(Dilys learns that Hogwarts is liberated just a few hours after.)

* * *

11.

Lockhart is lost.

"If I smile and don't believe, soon I know I'll wake from this dream," Lockhart declares, red-eyed.

"Hello, dear," Dilys says hesitantly. She can't stand it anymore. Miriam has been lying in his embrace for a day since her death. "Has no one told you she's not breathing?"

Lockhart weeps harder.

"Don't cry," Dilys coaxes.

It is futile.

"What is life without her? Does this universe exist?" Lockhart asks rhetorically. "Real, or not real? Is anything even real anymore?"

Lockhart chokes. "I keep thinking it's all an illusion. That she's sleeping. That she'll wake up and read to me the books I had written. That she'll help teach me to write again."

Years later, he still hasn't stopped weeping for her.

Lockhart lays flowers on her grave. He stays there for a while, then walks away.

* * *

12.

Lockhart is dying.

There are some maladies that can't be cured, this truism Dilys knows. She knows it deeply, as deep as she knows her very soul. She hates it dearly, and oh—how she wishes it wasn't so.

But when she sees Lockhart suffering for years, slowly dying from the illness inside, her heart aches.

There's poison in her veins again.


End file.
